Capture, Detention and Torture in the Secret UAE Prison in Yemen

“They come to strip off our clothes not to liberate us. After taking your clothes off, they tie your hands to a steel pole from the right and the left so you are spread open in front of them. Then the sodomizing starts,” a released prisoner from a secret United Arab Emirates prison black-site.

“All I could think of was Abu Ghraib. But if you compare the [UAE-Saudi-led coalition] secret prisons to Guantanamo Bay detention camp, it’s no exaggeration, you could make the argument that these Saudi-UAE prisons are much worse.”

The 55-year-old civilian from Yemen`s southern province of Aden said that he was abducted from his home and kept in a secret UAE prison for 18 months on charges of raising the flag of Yemen, signifying his support for a unified Yemen and opposition to the UAE’s military occupation of the southern district:

They blindfolded me and drove me to an unknown place, later I knew it was al-Mushar military base run by Abu al Yamamah, then they took me to a jail.”

A.F.D. had been moved across the network of secret UAE prisons multiple times where he was interrogated dozens of times. During his interrogations, he was tortured with electricity, sexual violence, beatings, and attack dogs while blindfolded and chained down.

“Cells are overcrowded, guards are cruel, there is indiscriminate violence. I even saw a young boy being raped. For a long time, he refused to eat because of the appalling shock.”

Hundreds of detainees from Aden, Hadramout provinces suffered similar abuses, including sexual violence, in the UAE-run secret prisons across southern Yemen.